Roaming Wolves

The snow is up to my thighs now and it's getting hard to go out and feed my horse. A herd of deer have been coming into the yard at night and eating my pine trees and sharing with my mare from her manger. It is unbelievably cold here! It was -16f when I took my son to school this morning. He has been home from school for over a week now because of the bitter cold and snow. I am waiting for the school to call and cancel again today and have me go pick him up. I home school my youngest son so, he never gets snow days. I pulled him out of his elementary school about a year ago and I will probably home school him for another year. Yesterday most of the roads were closed around Idaho because of unsafe driving conditions and we just hung out and played Rock Band and watched DVDs. I am good at drums and singing but, I get kicked off stage if I try to play guitar.

Our friend Zane called. I have known him since he was five and we have seen each other through some hard times. He has a good heart. My son has two friends that I love and adore. One has moved away to go and live with his dad. I don't get to see him too much any more and I miss him terribly. It broke my heart completely when he moved. It's hard to feel that he has moved on and has another life without me being a big part of it. I don't know, I think that you love and become attached to people but, I always seem to lose those that I love the most in life.

Zane comes from a ranching family in the area and even though he is young, he works at his ranch and has many of the responsibilities of an adult. He does this and juggles basketball and school as well. He has the most beautiful mare named Peyton--after his favorite quarterback. She's a brown and white Paint with blue eyes. He bought her as a yearling and he and his dad broke her( I don't think that's the right term anymore, it would be more like "gentled" her to ride.) He loves working out there on the ranch with his dad and always mentions it. I think it would be a great life if you didn't have to go out in sub-zero weather to work. He said that he has a new calf he is nursing. The mother abandoned it and he is taking care of it.

We talked about a report of wolves in the area and debated about whether they were actually out there. There is supposedly two wolves running together behind my house. His ranch runs behind our property through the woods and along the river. The ranchers are calving right now so they don't want wolves roaming in the area. Neither of us have heard any wolves at night so, he thinks they are just coyotes.

Idaho ranch life in winter

I and my two sons were recently invited to visit a working cattle ranch nestled in the desolate and gorgeous back-country of southeastern, Idaho. The snow covered country is rugged and beautiful with rolling hills, rivers and cottonwood trees. It was freezing out but sunny and a bit windy. In this country you see very few houses and the ones you do see are log houses or made of hand made brick and hand hew basalt from over a century ago. The ranch that we visited was a generational ranch founded seven generations before. When they founded the ranch there were Native American tee-pees dotting the landscape.

The ranchers walked into the barn wearing chaps and warm clothing and brought three teams of black and white draft horses out and hitched them to two sleighs and a wagon. They loaded massive bales of hay on to the sleighs and we jumped on top of them and rode the horse drawn sleighs out to where the cows were in a herd out on the range. We passed by a small river and the rancher had placed wheat flour out to feed the wild turkeys to help them through the winter and we saw many ducks and an Osprey fishing out of the river. Elk and deer herds also make this ranch their home.

The land on this ranch has remained the same for over a hundred years. Here you won't find the urban sprawl of housing tracks and discount stores just the quite peaceful symbiotic preservation of the ranching way of life and the wild life that make this area their home.

We went out and tore off the massive flakes of hay and threw them to the cows. It was hard work but, OMG we had a good time doing it! After we fed we rode back and the cowboys made a campfire and we drank hot chocolate and ate dough-nuts.

I took the pictures over to show my mom and the second picture was the first one that she looked at and she goes,"why is this man wearing shorts in the middle of winter?" She thought he was wearing some bizarre hot pants and leg-warmer combo! She didn't realize that he had a pair of leather chaps over his Wranglers. Yes folks he's not only a rancher but a Chip-N-Dales dancer!